Honors Theses

Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Department

Political Science

First Advisor

Matt DiGiuseppe

Relational Format

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

This thesis seeks to study the relationship between state capacity and civil conflict in India. This thesis provides insight on concepts such as state capacity, intrastate rebellious conflict, and greed and grievance, but the main focus of this thesis is on sub-national differences. The thesis attempts to demonstrate how sub-national differences may affect state capacity and influence intrastate conflict. Two aspects of sub-national differences are investigated: topography and roads. Specifically, data for topography and roads are confined within India. India is chosen to be a case study due to its diverseness in people and geography. The methods used to record this data involve carefully examining maps within each sub-national region and recording these examinations into SPSS to determine possible correlations to conflict. Three categories of recorded conflict are used as independent variables: state based violence, battle deaths, and terroristic deaths. These independent variables consist of measured activities in India from as early as the 1980s to as late as 2011. The findings from a regression analysis of this data suggest that topography and roads is correlated to conflict. The study concludes that increased topography correlates to an increase in terroristic deaths, and a lack of roads is related to increased battle deaths, state based violence, and terrorism deaths.

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